Where is your Contact Center Utopia?
1 Mar, 2007
By: Linda Driscoll-DobelIn mid-2006, Contact Professional magazine held a focus group to explore the idea of “Contact Center Utopia.” We wondered:
• What exactly is utopia in this industry?
• Does such a state exist?
• If it does exist, what does it look and feel like?
• What are the characteristics of those organizations that attempt to achieve utopia?
Two key audience groups who play an important role in driving and shaping the contact center industry contributed to the discussions:
• Solutions Providers/ Vendors
• Industry Thought Leaders.
Each participant was asked for his or her perceptions about contact center utopia – if it exists today. If so, what is the vision? What does it takes to get there? What would need to happen to drive the industry to this level of success?
The idea of defining contact center utopia proved to be a difficult task for many of the participants. To ground the findings, the following thoughts emerged in the focus groups:
• It’s the ideal or perfect state.
• The best environment is one that is responsive to change and is proactive, yet controlled.
• The current status of the industry is that the search is still underway for utopia.
• Utopia is customer centric – too many centers are still cost centers.
• If utopia exists, then it is relational, not transactional.
• Utopia is “no place and someplace.”
• Utopia has had a changing focus through the years and is shifting to one of the customer experience.
• Utopia is different for every call center based on customer expectations.
• Utopia internally is a focus on the people.
• Being happy with the progress, but never satisfied.
While it was difficult to define the term, “utopia,” the participants had no difficulty speaking about the factors necessary to achieve the utopian state. Following are some of the responses:
1. Contact centers most likely to achieve “utopia” have a clear focus on the people -- from frontline skill development to executive-level buy-in, and every level and function in between.
2. This customer’s perception of satisfaction with the contact center is linked to the strength of the people focus within the organization.
3. Maximizing the use of the many tools available to the benefit of the people and the customer is an overlooked, yet essential.
Key Findings
People Focus
• Well-trained agents are critical to our success!
• We need agent feedback and an increased focus on service recovery (how do we perform outreach to our dissatisfied customers?)
• Knowledge workers who are geographically dispersed are a reality
• Too often, there is short-sighted (senior-level) management who hold things back and prevent centers from becoming as profitable as they can be
• People need to feel productive and integral to the process; they need to know that, “I made a difference,” and that they can feel good about continuing to do their job
• Easy stuff has been done on the people side – now it’s time for the tough stuff
• Employees need to be empowered to do things right
• Empowerment takes more than just monitoring
• If we work with a third party – it’s a partnership all the way, and a full, open examination of the good, the bad and the ugly is imperative
• People must feel that it’s a great place to work
• There should be career pathing that’s stronger than it is currently
• There is a need for senior management to come from the call center
• “Everyone is an agent,” is a philosophy to adopt; there needs to be a forward – backward – side-by-side view of the total organization that is transparent and fully disclosed – VoIP has the potential to make that happen
• We must learn how to use turnover in a positive way
• We need to understand generational differences; it’s about understanding the change (generational) and leveraging it
• We need to understand universal truths – one is hire slowly, fire quickly
• Be careful what you measure – you might get it!
• Finding the delicate balance between urgent and important activities is so important, yet so hard to achieve.
Customer Satisfaction
• Evolving customer expectations are driving change. This is driven in part by the various methods for customers to interact with companies, including the immediacy of Web interactions
• Right now the business is like a teenager – we’re dealing with the worst of everything – we don’t always offer the right response to the real issue
• The customer experience should be expressed as a continuum vs. an end point
• There needs to be a link between quality, cost and customer experience; we always need to know what the customer wants
• To achieve utopia, you must know the customer; you have to make sure we’re not driving the wrong behaviors -- AHT vs. great service can be contrary activities. We too often measure the wrong thing and the implementation is not aligned
• Metrics aren’t the issue, it’s the yearly top-down change in metrics that makes utopia hard to achieve. We need to turn the equation inside out
• First-call resolution is more important than service level
• We must identify different customer needs and give them options. We must segment our customer bases according to these needs
• How do our customers want to be contacted? That’s important in utopia
• Shouldn’t there be a Chief Customer Officer?
Maximizing Tools
• Technology must be a well-oiled machine!
• The people-process-technology concept is still important
• Utopia’s a perfect balance of demand to supply. There needs to be clarity of the interaction, speed and communication and transactional information for the company and about the customer
• We are not taking full advantage of automation. There are so many tools --- for the agent, for performance and blends thereof…the information is ahead of the time
• Information flow is key throughout the organization. We must have a link between internal operations, customer experience and our response to customers
• Vendors are not addressing the real problems – they tend to commoditize the problem, and that doesn’t always work
• The call center must become a “partner in the organization” – it’s as important as all the other infrastructure roles
• Call centers are living, dynamic organizations and they’re changing, learning, adapting all the time. The effective use of information and automation is part of what will foster growth
• Self-service could become a part of utopia
• Technology should help to identify and help to analyze the right expectations
• Feedback and communication to the organization as a whole is key
• Analytics and process alignment are needed.
The Global Perspective
How do contact center managers around the world view utopia? The winners of the 2006 Global Contact Centre Manager of the Year awards (sponsored by ICCM and CIAC) were posed a number of questions by the sponsors, among them, “If you had the complete power to change your centers, what are the two things you would focus on first?” Here’s what some of the winners had to say.
United Kingdom
DARRYL HILL
Sales Operations Manager
GEM
I would like to further develop GEM’s career-progression program, ensuring all staff levels are covered. I believe it is important for staff to see call centers as a career option, as opposed to a stopgap.
Technology in the call center industry is always evolving with new products and customer contact channels coming out continuously. I would look further into technology and how it could assist all operations more significantly than it already does. I would look at all current contracts within the company and see if we could make these much more effective, thus, improving utilization within each contract. We need to explore all avenues where technology is concerned and proactively source new and changing technology.
South Africa
Kevin Von Berg
Corporate Specialist
Eskom
• Group them [the contact centers] outside the present regional structures and place them under a centralized national management structure that operates them as a multi-site, but single national virtual center
• Create a dedicated support department handling workforce management, quality management and training specifically for the contact centers.
Singapore
TAN Soil Bian
AVP, Customer Service
StarHub Ltd
The first thing I would like to do is to relocate the call center to somewhere where public transport is more easily accessible. This would help to reduce the staffs'' time in commuting to and from the call center and attract more people to join the call center. The second thing I would like to do is to set up a childcare center for the call center staff so the staff has peace of mind while at work, knowing their children are well taken care of. This also enables the staff to drop by during meal breaks to spend some time with their young children.
Let’s all keep working toward our utopia.
